[Pollinator] Fwd: [beemonitoring] Re: number of US honey bee hives used strictly for polli...

Tue Feb 1 10:10:05 PST 2011

____________________________________
 From: Pollinator at sc.rr.com
To: beemonitoring at yahoogroups.com
Sent:  1/31/2011 6:28:07 P.M. Pacific Standard Time
Subj: [beemonitoring] Re: number  of US honey bee hives used strictly for 
pollination?

--- In _beemonitoring at yahoogroups.com_ 
(mailto:beemonitoring at yahoogroups.com) ,  Doug Yanega <dyanega at ...> wrote:
>
> I'm having some trouble  tracking down a firm estimate of the number 
> of honey bee hives in the  US that are used solely for pollination and 
> NOT for honey production  (the number for honey production was 2.44 
> million hives in 2008, so  that figure is solid and citable). Does 
> anyone know a good,  authoritative source for a nation-wide figure?

I doubt such a number  exists. The ag censuses are taken at the state level.

I filled out many  a form for the ag census over the years. At one 
point in early summer, I  figured I had 1300 hives, of which only 
about 200 were used for honey  prouction. This is not a major honey 
producing area.

Thus my bees  were always undercounted, because they only counted the 
ones used for  honey production. I pointed this out on several 
occasions to the ag  department officials, but never saw any 
indication of any change in the  census.

My pollination bees generally did at least two pollinations per  
season, some did three. Do you count each pollination, or?

Another  item, some were used for queen rearing in the spring, then 
generally  either given a queen or more likely merged back into some 
nucs to build  them up quickly.

Even beyond this, the number of hives can vary quite a  bit throughout 
the year and depends on how they are counted. I have little  
confidence in the USDA's "solid and citable" figure.

In the fall, I  would generally "take my winter losses early" and 
combine weak or  queenless hives with strong ones. After a summer of 
pesticide hits, I  sometimes had to combine three or four.

If you asked me how many hives  I had, would you want to know: how 
many after I made up 400 nucs in late  spring, how many I had left 
after the cotton spray season, or how many I  had late in the winter?

Any real number for any purpose is probably  closely related to the 
number of brood boxes with usable comb. A beekeeper  has to fill these 
at least for a portion of each year, or lose the comb to  wax worms, 
and once lost, they are usually more trouble to restore than to  get 
new ones. And that figure is generally known only to the  beekeeper.

Dave Green
Retired SC beekeeper
_http://pollinator.com/blog/_ (http://pollinator.com/blog/) 

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